09/02/2015
A meeting of minds in Cairo: Billion-dollar arms deal on table as Putin and Abdel ...
Vladimir Putin arrived in Egypt last night for talks with his Egyptian opposite number on new roubles-only trade deals, the sale of billions of dollars? worth of guns and tanks, and quite probably a new ?anti-terrorist? alliance of the kind Russia already boasts in Syria. President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi personally escorted Mr Putin from Cairo airport to an Egyptian Opera House performance of extracts from Tchaikovsky?s Swan Lake and Verdi?s Aida, a combination of Tsarist bourgeois fantasy and ancient Egyptian myth that might reflect the characters of both men. Their first meeting on Tuesday will be partly ceremonial but will by all accounts go well, for the Russian president has exhibited a...
